Kraken

Some movies announce exactly what they are within the first few minutes. “Kraken” (2026) is refreshingly upfront about its ambitions. It is the kind of film that tends to outlast whatever else came out the same year.

Everything the film wants you to feel is right there in its tagline: “Only 5% of the ocean has been explored for a reason….” Much of the momentum comes from Sara Khorami as Johanne, Mikkel Bratt Silset as Erik, Ingvild Holthe Bygdnes as Henriette, whose scenes together set the stakes without over-explaining them. The action and horror and thriller framing gives the story a clear emotional lane to run in, and it rarely strays from it without good reason.

What separates it from a lot of other action and horror and thriller titles is restraint — it does not rush to show its hand, letting small character beats do work that louder films would hand off to spectacle.

Sound design and score work quietly in the background here, doing the kind of unglamorous work that only gets noticed when it is missing.

Underneath the surface plot, this is a film interested in cautionary, norwegian folklore, sea monster — the kind of ideas that reward a second watch once you already know where things are headed.

The supporting side of the cast — Øyvind Brandtzæg, Jenny Evensen, Steinar Klouman Hallert — fills out the world without crowding the main story, the kind of bench depth that makes a rewatch reveal new details.

First-time viewers and longtime fans of Pål Øie tend to walk away with slightly different takeaways, which is usually a sign there is more going on beneath the surface than a single viewing can fully catch.

Pål Øie trusts the material enough to let scenes breathe rather than cutting away too early, the 94 minutes runtime is used efficiently — there is very little fat to trim, and Sara Khorami in particular carries scenes that could easily have felt like filler in less capable hands, the production values, backed by Handmade films in Norwegian Woods, hold up scene after scene.

Made for roughly $1,000,000, it eventually brought in $14,329,678 at the global box office, the kind of return that turns a film into a genre reference point rather than a one-and-done watch.

Whether it holds up on a second viewing is really the test for a film like this, and here it does — knowing where the story is headed only makes it easier to notice the groundwork being laid early on.

Coming out in 2026, it did not need a massive marketing campaign to find its audience, and that slow-burn word-of-mouth path is often a better predictor of staying power than an opening-weekend spike ever is.

For viewers deciding whether to press play, the short version is: this delivers on what it promises, does not overstay its 94 minutes, and rewards anyone willing to meet it halfway. It is not flashy about earning that recommendation, and it does not need to be.